NCEI added Alaska climate divisions to its nClimDiv dataset on Friday, March 6, 2015, coincident with the release of the February 2015 monthly monitoring report. For more information on this data, please visit the Alaska Climate Divisions FAQ.

Although drought conditions have improved slightly in North Dakota and western Alaska since the end of May, conditions have worsened across the West, South and Southeast U.S., with many areas transitioning from moderate or severe to extreme or exceptional drought through June. Hawaii and southern Puerto Rico continued to experience substantial moisture deficits, and parts of New England were also abnormally dry as of the end of the month.

As of June 30th, there have been 36,761 wildland fires and more than 2.1 million acres burned so far this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). Thanks in part to June rainfall and the efforts of fire fighters, the year 2008 now ranks third behind 2006 and 2002 in quantity of acreage burnt to date — down from second at the end of May — and the number of fires falls well below the 1998–2008 average. Approximately 466 large fires have been contained to date in 2008.

Dead fuel moisture levels remained critically low across portions of the West and Southwest during June. The 10–hour fuel moisture levels also dried out noticeably between June 8th and June 15th over much of the western United States. By June 30th, 10–hour fuel moisture levels had recovered slightly in parts of the Southwest, but dried out across portions of the western Central Plains and east into Wisconsin.

Medium to larger fuels (i.e., the June 30th 100–hr and 1000–hr fuel moistures) continued to be dry across most of the central and southern states of the western U.S., and showed substantial drying across the western and north–central parts of the U.S. from the start of the month.

Citing This Report

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Wildfires for June 2008, published online July 2008, retrieved on December 9, 2016 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/fire/200806.